A Hackathon at AWS

TLDR: The WIT Hackathon was a really different experience from my first one at MCIC

UNSW WIT (Women in Technology) club had organised a hackathon at the AWS (Amazon Web Services) office in Sydney and I was fortunate enough to be a part of it. This was a day-long hack (10 hours to be precise). In that period we had to come up with a functional code and a great presentation.  The topic was Assistive Technology. 

Our team- ‘team A’ (unlike others, we were too lazy to rename it) came up with a product called ‘creatAbility‘ that would match disabled people with creators to create customised products at low costs. The website would help those with really specific needs to get products or hacks made by enthusiasts and volunteers without spending a fortune. 

I had enrolled as an individual and was matched with my teammates by the WIT team based on our abilities. I was the UX person on the team while the others were from a tech background. The hack started at 9am but we started working at only about 10:30 after a workshop on Lean Canvas by the Founders from UNSW as well as Watson IBM workshop. There was a pitching workshop as well just a few hours before the actual pitching. 

David from IBM giving us inputs

team A

It was just the pitching team and the judges for the preliminary round. Our team did score well, but unfortunately, didn’t make it to the top 5. The ones who got selected had to make a 6-minute pitch in front of all the teams and a panel of 5 (or 6) judges. I was pretty impressed by the finalists- they had great presentations and a decently functional product. 

This was my second hackathon. It was my first one where a functional code was required. So it was pretty different from the one at MCIC. Of course, there were mentors going around helping the teams and being supportive. And the food was very nice (they had KFC for dinner!). 

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We are doing group interviews with students and lecturers next week for our startup. I interviewed a few lecturers this week and it was really nice getting feedback from them.